Climate Change Vulnerability and Adaptation

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2.2.5 Climate Change Vulnerability and Adaptation

1. Regional Climate Change Workshop 2011 Consideration of climate change is part of the underpinning of an ecosystems-based approach to fisheries management. In March 2011, the USAIDBaNafaa project with WWF-WAMER convened a regional workshop in Senegal with a focus on building awareness of climate change issues in fisheries and MPAs and strategies for incorporating these issues into fisheries and marine conservation decision-making. The workshop was attended by representatives from each of the seven countries of the Commission Sous-Régionale des Pêches CSRP that includes Cape Verde, Gambia, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Mauritania, Senegal and Sierra Leone. The take home message was that coastal and marine areas are already affected by multiple stressors with climate change becoming a more serious threat when coupled with these other anthropogenic impacts. Coastal erosion, deforestation and habitat fragmentation become even more serious problems in coastal locations and fishing communities when coupled with the projected impacts of climate change. Non-sustainable resource use, including over fishing, reduces the adaptive capacity of natural systems and thus decreases the resilience to respond to climatic changes. Sand mining, alteration of waterways, population pressure and improper siting of infrastructure leave both the communities and the environment with increased vulnerability to climate change. It was concluded that anticipatory adaptation to accelerated negative environmental changes does not need to wait for specific climate scenarios, but is more reliant on the examination of current vulnerabilities and the range of possible no-regret strategies. 2. Bi-Lateral GambiaSenegal Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment 2012 In July 2011, the USAIDBa-Nafaa project received approval for an add-on component for a bilateral fisheries climate change vulnerability assessment of the Saloum Delta and Gambia River estuary area. The project contracted an interdisciplinary team coordinated by WWF- WAMPO to assess the vulnerability of central coastal Senegal Saloum and The Gambia marine and estuarine ecosystems and fisheries communities to climate change. USAID’s “Adapting to Coastal Climate Change: A Guidebook for Development Planners” was a key reference document. Local experts compiled, reviewed and analyzed the considerable body of work already available on the actual and potential impacts of climate change in the study area. In some cases, limited additional data was collected and analyzed. The components were: • Inundation vulnerability by Pr. Isabelle Niang from the University of Dakar. • GIS mapping of vulnerability by Malick Diagne from Centre de Suivi Ecologique, Dakar. • Socio-economic vulnerability by Cheikh Tidiane Sall. • Mangrove vulnerability by Richard Dacosta from Wetlands International. • Fish species vulnerability by Famara Darboe, Assistant Director of Fisheries, The Gambia. 55 In April 2012, a bi-lateral workshop attended by 44 participants was held in The Gambia to review the findings of the reports and their recommendations among a broad group of 18 government and civil society stakeholder institutions from Senegal and The Gambia. The vulnerability assessment concluded that significant degradation of landscapes with its consequence on communities’ livelihoods and coastal and marine ecosystems is occurring in this zone since the early 1960s. Climate change sea level rise, coastal erosion, mangrove degradation soil salinization, among other causes, is a major driver of these changes. Coastal and marine zones such are among the most vulnerable. Key findings included: • In the scenario of a 2m inundation level by 2100 associated with a 20-49cm sea level rise, 52 of the Saloum Delta area will be inundated as well as the City of Banjul, the village of Albreda and 90 of the mangrove in The Gambia Estuary. Islands will vanish, as well as more than 23 of human settlement living on islands in the Saloum Delta. • Reduced precipitation 35 drop and less regularity of rainfall 1 year in 5 flooding will result in salt intrusion, less exposure of the mangrove ecosystems to fresh water, less organic matter discharge to the ocean and subsequent increased mangrove die-back, disturbed fish biological processes food chain and reproductive state and loss of rice fields and orchards. • The whole coastline open to the ocean is exposed to coastal erosion. The sandy nature of beaches make the coastal zone very sensitive to increasing intensity of wind and waves. • Livelihoods in the study area are heavily dependent on fisheries, agriculture and other ecosystem-based activities, including tourism. Value added and alternative livelihoods are limited for the most climate change vulnerable communities. • Positive examples of adaptive capacity include two ecosystem-based fisheries co- management plans recently approved in The Gambia, mangrove restoration activities in several communities in both countries in recent years, and pilot alternative economic activities in The Saloum, such as salt production, that capitalize on changing conditions. Participants considered how this body of knowledge, although incomplete and evolving, might serve as a foundation for adaptive action to reduce the vulnerability of the study zone’s fisheries, fishing communities and coastal ecosystems which are of significant local, national, bi-lateral, regional and global importance. Priority vulnerability “hotspots” within the study area, priority socio-economic activities and priority climate change adaptation measures within the scope of the USAIDBaNafaa Project were identified as shown in the Figure 46 below. These recommendations provided the basis for a proposal to USAID in July 2012 to add funds to the project to implement Climate Change Adaptation CCA activities. The proposal was not acted on by USAID, but workshop participants continued to consider the information and analyses introduced at the workshop in their work at their respective institutions. Figure 46. Workshop Outputs for recommended priority areas, economic activities and adaptation measures Protection and Rehabilitation of Mangroves and Wetlands Diversified Livelihoods for Sustainable Resource Use A Cross-cutting Communications Plan Shoreline Protection BanjulTanbi Wetlands The Gambia DionewarDjifer Senegal Bettenty Senegal FishingShellfishing Processing Agriculture Tourism 56

2.3 Intermediate Results 3 and 4: